E-Mail Considered

Recently, I heard yet another lament in regard to
E-mail and letter writing. The theme of this lament was
not too different than others I've heard before. The
general idea is that we've lost the art of letter
writing, and that E-mail is just extended telephone
conversation, not worthy of being classified as actual
writing. This most recent lament was by Andrew Lam, a
commentator on National
Public Radio's"All thing
Considered". The NPR-published synopsis
of his comments is as follows:

E-Mail -- Commentator Andrew Lam remarks on the substance of E-mail
conversation. He says a friend of his complains that although she hears
from him more by E-mail now, she misses him more and knows him less
than when he wrote letters. Their conversation is shallower. There's a
high price for digital communication; language is streamlined and
intimacy lost.

In general, I think that Andrew's comments are
interesting, amusing, thoughtful, and well presented. My
objection is making E-mail the scapegoat for shallow
communication. Once again the medium is being confused
with the message.

Shallow Communication in History

Consider the following passage from a letter written
before there was E-mail, before there were telephones,
and when writing words with ink on paper was the
predominant form of remote communication:

As regards that beautiful red coat which took my fancy so vastly, pray,
pray let me know where it is to be had, and at what price -- for that I
have quite forgotten, having been unable to take in anything at the
time but its splendour! Indeed such a coat I must have -- one which
will really do justice to certain buttons with which my fancy has long
gone pregnant! I saw them once, when I was choosing buttons for a
suit, in the Kohlmarkt at Brandau's button-shop, opposite the Milano.
They are made of mother-of-pearl, with some sort of white stones round
the edge and a fine yellow stone set in the centre of each. I should
like to have all my things of good quality, workmanship and appearance!
How is it, I wonder, that those who have not the means would be
prepared to spend any amount on such articles, while those who have the
means -- do not do so![1]

What the above passage proves is that W. A. Mozart
could prattle with the best of them -- actually better
than many. The fact that he wrote this passage in a
letter does not make it any more or less shallow than if
he were an E-mail user of today. The fact that the letter
survived and made it into a compilation provides a
fascinating window on the character of one of the pivotal
figures of European music history.

Writing Revisited

I think that we sometimes place too much value on past
technology. I recall passages from Sherlock Holmes
stories, in which short scribbled notes were dispatched
via messenger and could be as terse and grammatically
incomplete as the E-mail messages of today. Arthur Conan
Doyle's picture of Victorian London showed a
communication system much akin to today's E-mail, but
with human power rather than electronic power as the
transmission method. The advent of the telephone made
such short dispatches unnecessary and caused us to erase
from our cultural memory the natural practices that
preceded it.

Some make the argument that the physical process of
writing somehow enhances the quality of the experience
and result. I've heard of writers who produce their
output using number 2 pencils on yellow tablets. I have
to admit that, as one whose third grade teacher suggested
I use a typewriter for my homework assignments, that
particular physical process has always been (and still
is) a struggle. A typewriter provided some emancipation
from the bounds of cursive, but a computer with its
instant ability to correct those digital miscues proved
to be the hammer which broke the barriers to written
expression.

Writing Revived

Rather than lament the deficiencies of today's E-mail
messages, I revel in this new discovery of writing. I am
probably not alone in being an E-mail pack rat, valuing
the record of activity and information that my collection
of past E-mail provides. I celebrate this golden age of
writing which will undoubtedly pass when we begin to
leave video-clip messages, recorded on our computers with
their built-in digital cameras, instead of taking the
trouble to type words on a keyboard. I suspect, however,
that we will not escape the written word and that if we
do have the equivalent of an "out of time"
telephone, we will still use the equivalent of E-mail to
express the concepts which require a thoughtful
presentation or a well-constructed argument.

During my past fifteen years or so using E-mail, I
have received many messages which were thoughtfully
written and which would probably not have been sent if it
were not for the availability of the medium. I also have
to admit that even though I've drafted innumerable E-mail
messages sent to mailing lists and fellow professionals,
I still don't communicate as well as I should to my
family and friends who have E-mail. In other words and to
borrow from another writer, the fault dear Andrew is not
in our E-mail....